Zynga debuts its first India-focused game; to expand Bengaluru studio

Zynga is doubling down on building mobile games out of its India development studio in Bengaluru, as it looks to tap into growing smartphone penetration and increasing data consumption in the country.Vikas SN | ETtech | Updated: September 26, 2017, 16:43 IST

San Francisco-based social gaming company Zynga is doubling down on building mobile games out of its India development studio in Bengaluru, as it looks to tap into growing smartphone penetration and increasing data consumption in the country.

Zynga India country head Deepthi Menon told ETtech that the studio has developed its first ever mobile game that is "made in India for India". Called Rangoli Rekha, the game is targeted at the rising number of women mobile gamers in the country.

"We have currently put out the game in the app store for testing, wherein we are testing various metrics and how users are responding to the game. We want to iterate on the game for few more months before the public launch" Menon said "We are experimenting with what we find in this particular game to take steps for our entire portfolio of games"

"We are experimenting with what we find in this particular game to take steps for localizing our entire portfolio of games" Menon said.

The game development studio, which is Zynga's second largest studio outside our headquarters, also manages the entire game development for several of the games across three of the four big genres that Zynga operates. This includes action strategy games, match-three casual puzzle genre and the company's flagship genre Farmville genre that comprises of 2 web games and 2 mobile games.

"We do end-to-end game development in this studio - we are responsible for coming up with the concept, creating the game itself, putting out the game to get feedback from users and iterating the product among others." Menon.

To complement the growth in its mobile games portfolio, Zynga is looking to expand the studio in the forthcoming year. "We have 350 people in the Bengaluru studio. The studio grew by 20% in this year and we have some massive growth plans in the upcoming year. We are looking for talent in game design, product management, art and engineering" Menon said.

The mobile gaming market in India is expected to cross $3 billion in 2019 from $200 million in 2016, according to a FICCI-KPMG report last year. India is also among the top five mobile gaming markets across the globe, as per a report by business intelligence firm App Annie.

That said, monetisation of games in India is still maturing and will likely require another 2-3 years, Menon said.

"Monetization of games in India is still maturing. The Indian market is now about creating high engagement experiences for players and capturing the audience. How we will monetize out of it and the various streams of monetization is a maturing and a evolving thing" she said.